Page 1319 - war-and-peace

of Smolensk on the sixth of August (he considered that it
could and should have been defended) and after his sick fa-
ther had had to flee to Moscow, abandoning to pillage his
dearly beloved Bald Hills which he had built and peopled.
But despite this, thanks to his regiment, Prince Andrew
had something to think about entirely apart from general
questions. Two days previously he had received news that
his father, son, and sister had left for Moscow; and though
there was nothing for him to do at Bald Hills, Prince An-
drew with a characteristic desire to foment his own grief
decided that he must ride there.
He ordered his horse to be saddled and, leaving his regi-
ment on the march, rode to his father’s estate where he had
been born and spent his childhood. Riding past the pond
where there used always to be dozens of women chattering
as they rinsed their linen or beat it with wooden beetles,
Prince Andrew noticed that there was not a soul about and
that the little washing wharf, torn from its place and half
submerged, was floating on its side in the middle of the
pond. He rode to the keeper’s lodge. No one at the stone
entrance gates of the drive and the door stood open. Grass
had already begun to grow on the garden paths, and horses
and calves were straying in the English park. Prince An-
drew rode up to the hothouse; some of the glass panes were
broken, and of the trees in tubs some were overturned and
others dried up. He called for Taras the gardener, but no one
replied. Having gone round the corner of the hothouse to
the ornamental garden, he saw that the carved garden fence
was broken and branches of the plum trees had been torn

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